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Gendering the Cult of the OffensiveLauren Wilcox aa Department of Political Science , University of Minnesota ,Published online: 18 May 2009.

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Security Studies, 18:214–240, 2009Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0963-6412 print / 1556-1852 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09636410902900152

Gendering the Cult of the Offensive

LAUREN WILCOX

Theorists of the offense-defense balance frequently note that per-ceptions of technology, as well as military doctrine, play a role instates’ perception of offense dominance or the “cult of the offensive.”I argue that gender may constitute the missing link in explainingthis misperception and suggest three possible areas of investigation.First, the perceptions and uses of technologies are dependent upongendered ideologies which encouraged disastrous strategies in theFirst World War. Second, gender is an integral part of nationalismthat promotes offensive policies by defining masculinity in terms ofheroic service to the nation. Third, gendered discourses of protec-tion use the language of defense to legitimate offensive policies. Byanalyzing the roots of perceptions of offense dominance, feministanalysis shows how gender discourses and the production of genderidentities are not confined to individuals and the private realm butrather are a pervasive fact of social life on an international scale.

GENDERING OFFENSE-DEFENSE THEORY

Offense-defense theory in international security studies asserts that war ismore likely when offensive military strategies and technologies are at arelative advantage over defensive strategies and technologies. The offense-defense balance is, in short, “the relative ease of attack and defense.”1 Thisinsight has led scholars to try to calculate and understand the components ofthe offense-defense balance at different times throughout history in order to

Lauren Wilcox is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Universityof Minnesota.

The author would like to thank Michael Barnett, Jennifer Lobasz, Aaron Rapport, LauraSjoberg, the participants at the ISA 2007 Workshop on Gender and Security Studies, and theeditor and two anonymous reviewers at Security Studies for their helpful comments.

1 Stephen Biddle, “Rebuilding the Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory,” Journal of Politics 63no. 3 (2001): 741–74.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 215

understand and predict the occurrence of war. According to offense-defensetheorists, the variables determining the offense-defense balance include ge-ographical, doctrinal, and societal aspects, but the overall state of militarytechnology is generally considered to be the most important factor.2

Although several scholars have noted the difficulty in determiningwhether offense or defense has the military advantage and what the correctconceptualization of the offense-defense balance is or should be, most anal-yses of the offense-defense balance presume that the offensive or defensivebias of the system can be rationally known. These same theorists, however,are equally cognizant that the offense-defense balance is frequently mis-understood, and in fact, offensive capabilities are commonly overestimated.Stephen Van Evera, a prominent scholar of offense-defense theory, notes thatperceived offensive dominance is widespread, but real offensive dominanceis rare. “Offensive dominance is more often imagined than real, however.Thus the more urgent question is: how can illusions of offense dominancebe controlled? Answers are elusive because the roots of these illusions areobscure.”3

Van Evera argues that illusions of offensive dominance have causedwars and contends that the initiation of the First World War is one exampleof when these illusions have been most influential. He explains that “duringthe decades before the First World War a phenomenon which may be calleda ‘cult of the offensive’ swept through Europe.”4 These “mythical or mysticalarguments [about offensive dominance] obscured the technical dominationof the defense” in military strategy and security policy making.5 As a result,Van Evera reasons, “the belief in easy conquest eventually pervaded publicimages of international politics” and “the cult of the offensive was a main-spring driving many of the mechanisms which brought about the First WorldWar.”6

2 See, for example, Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” in Offense, Defense,and War, ed. Michael E. Brown et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 3–65, 167–214; George Quester,Offense and Defense in the International System (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977); Jack Levy, “TheOffensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis,” InternationalStudies Quarterly 28 no. 2 (June 1984); Charles Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann, “What is the Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure It?” in Offense, Defense, and War; Stephen Van Evera, “The Cultof the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” in Offense, Defense, and War, 69–118; StephenVan Evera, “Offense, Defense and the Causes of War,” International Security 22 no. 4 (1998); StephenVan Evera, Causes of War: Power and Roots of Conflict (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Biddle,“Rebuilding the Foundations.”

3 Van Evera, “Offense, Defense and the Causes of War,” 263.4 Van Evera, “Cult of the Offensive,” 69.5 Ibid., 72.6 Ibid., 73, 77. The existence of a “cult of the offensive” has recently been challenged in the literature

on WWI and the offense-defense balance. Kier Lieber, “The New History of World War I and What it Meansfor International Relations Theory,” International Security 32 no. 2 (Fall 2007): 155–91. The impact ofLieber’s piece for my argument is discussed below.

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216 L. Wilcox

This article critiques a missing link in offense-defense theory. ThoughVan Evera effectively presents the argument that misperceived offensivedominance caused the First World War—noting it is therefore importantto learn the “roots of these illusions” that cause states to be preoccupiedwith offense even in times of defense dominance—offense-defense theorydoes not offer a convincing explanation as to the source of the perception ofoffensive dominance. I demonstrate that insights from feminist scholarshippoint to different ways in which gender may be relevant in constituting theroots of these illusions: the overestimation of offense dominance and theresulting propensity toward war. Specifically, I suggest three pathways inwhich gender may provide the missing link in explaining the cult of theoffensive: the gendered perceptions of technology, gendered nationalism,and definitions of citizenship and honor based on the gendered concept ofprotection.

Perception in Traditional Accounts of the Offense-Defense Balance

Offense-defense theorists argue that the offense-defense balance changesthe probability of war by affecting the severity of the security dilemma.7 Thesecurity dilemma will be more severe if the balance favors the offense, whilethe destabilizing effects of anarchy can be lessened substantially if the de-fense is dominant, assuming offense dominance and defense dominance canbe distinguished.8 While there is much debate about the precise factors thatconstitute the offense-defense balance, the most frequently cited predictor ofthe (actual) offense-defense balance is military technology, which is impor-tant insofar as it contribute to making offensive or defense strategies easier.9

Theories of the offense-defense balance formulate the nature of this balancedifferently. For example, Sean Lynn-Jones defines the offense-defense bal-ance as a ratio of investments between offensive and defensive technologiesthat is necessary to win wars.10 On the other hand, Charles Glaser and ChaimKaufmann argue that only advances in mobility are essentially offensive, asis bridge-building equipment.11 Certain offense-defense theorists argue someweapons are inherently offensive or defensive; others argue that the overallstate of military technology defines the offense-defense balance. Lynn-Jones,for example, maintains that since relative costs of defensive versus offensivestrategies determine the offense-defense balance, individual technologies arenot as much an issue as the costs of particular weapons systems that mayincorporate both offensive and defensive technologies. Regardless of the

7 The security dilemma describes a situation in which means taken by one state to increase securityrender other states more insecure. Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” 169.

8 Ibid., 46–50.9 Sean Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (1995): 675–77.10 Ibid., 664–65.11 Kaufman and Glaser, “What is the Offense Defense Balance,” 284–85.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 217

precise measurement of the balance, offense-defense theorists share an as-sumption that at some point, certain technologies or technological systemsare objectively pro-defense or pro-offense. The offensive or defense ad-vantages of other technologies depend upon the era but can, according tooffense-defense theorists, be objectively determined.

Offense-defense theorists note, however, that how states perceive (oftenerroneously) the offense-defense balance influences their behavior outsidethe actual dominance of offense or defense. In particular, the offense-defenseliterature suggests states tend to overestimate the ease of conquest; that is,states tend to mistakenly believe offense is dominant. Several theorists haveattempted to explain this overestimation by asserting that military and polit-ical doctrines can override the existence of defensive predominance in mili-tary technologies to result in offensive strategies.12 For example, Robert Jervisnotes that some state leaders believe security is only possible through con-quest, no matter what the offense-defense balance.13 Ted Hopf has arguedthat “strategic beliefs” are more important than military capabilities in caus-ing instability in war.14 These beliefs encompass ideas about the intentionsof other states and fears of bandwagoning and domino effects. According toVan Evera, prime predictions of the offense-defense theory include the state’sbeliefs about offensive opportunities and conquest. Lynn-Jones goes furtherto specify that perceptions of the offense-defense balance give the theory itsexplanatory power.15 As Van Evera notes, “Real offense dominance is rare inmodern times, but the perception of offense dominance is fairly widespread.Therefore, if perceived offense dominance causes war it causes lots of war,and offense-defense theory explains much of international history.”16 Thereare, however, few if any accounts of the cause or constitution of perceivedoffensive dominance in offense-defense theory.

The offense-defense literature stipulates that there must be some form ofobjective offense-defense balance as there can be no misperception of theoffense-defense balance without some notion of an objective balance, nomatter what quantifiable or unquantifiable variables make up this balance.However, whatever this objective balance may be is outside the scope of this

12 Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984); Van Evera, “Offense, Defense, and the Causes ofWar,” 228; Keir A. Leiber, War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics over Technology (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 2005).

13 Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” 21–22. In this case, the second and third partsof my argument (that gender constitutes offensive military polities and the “protection racket”) are morerelevant in explaining how gender is constitutive of the offense-defense balance.

14 Ted Hopf, “Polarity, Military Balance, and War,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 2 (June1991): 475–93.

15 Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” 681.16 Van Evera, “Offense, Defense and the Causes of War,” 263.

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218 L. Wilcox

piece.17 My concern is with the puzzle that offense-defense theorists haveidentified as the contradiction between what offense-defense theory tells usabout the actual costs and benefits of war and the widespread perceptionsof offense dominance. In this article, I focus on the sources of perceptionof offense dominance and the conditions underpinning the cult of the of-fensive that encourage aggressive military strategies. Regardless of how theoffense-defense balance itself may be properly calculated, the perceptionof such balance by military planners and political leaders arguably explainsmore state behavior than the objective offense-defense balance that is dif-ficult to specify. The remainder of this article argues that gender analysisdemonstrates how gender is central to understanding—both generally andspecifically—perceived offensive dominance, the cult of the offensive.

Feminist Analyses of Offense-Defense Theory

As discussed in the introduction to this special issue, international relationsfeminists use gender as a category of analysis to examine questions of fram-ing and possibility in global politics. A feminist analysis of offense-defensetheory asks what assumptions about gender (and race, class, nationality, andsexuality) make it possible for belligerents to consistently exaggerate offen-sive capabilities and therefore engage in counterproductive offensive militarystrategies. Rather than coming up with an alternative causal explanation ofwhy wars occur (or why a specific war has occurred), I theorize the roleof gender to the offense-defense balance as one of constitution. If genderis necessary for establishing certain perceptions of offensive or defensivecapabilities, then gender is constitutive of the offense-defense balance.

Constitutive theorizing differs from causal theorizing in a number ofways. As explained by Alex Wendt, constitutive theorizing involves ask-ing the “how possible” and “what” questions rather than the “why” ofcausal theorizing.18 Constitutive theorizing recognizes that social entities are

17 An objective offense-defense balance is problematic from a feminist perspective for a numberof reasons. First, it assumes there is a context in which going to war is rational, as in certain windowsof opportunity. The main problem is in properly discerning the most and least advantageous times.Feminists have challenged the legitimacy of the realist assumptions that underpin this logic. See, forexample, Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992),27–66; Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Also, fem-inist epistemologists have critiqued the assumption of an external reality that exists outside the sociallyembedded processes of language and knowledge production. Thus, one cannot easily separate objectivereality from knowledgeable practices of a given time and place. See, for example, V. Spike Peterson,“Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender and International Relations,” Millennium:Journal of International Studies 21 no. 2 (1992): 183–206; Birgit Locher and Elisabeth Prugl, “Feminismand Constructivism: Worlds Apart or Sharing the Middle Ground?” International Studies Quarterly 45(2001): 111–29. However, the implications of these critiques for the offense-defense debate will not betaken up in this article as the goal is to show the relevance of feminist theory to extant work in securitystudies.

18 Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations, 77–91.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 219

constructed and imbued with characteristics derived from external or inter-nal social structures. Thus, to say that X is constitutive of Y is to argue thatY exists “in virtue of” X. Laura Sjoberg, in the introduction to this specialedition, quotes Wendt on constitutive theorizing: “What we seek in askingthese questions is insight into what it is that instantiates some phenomenon,not why that phenomenon comes about.”19 This is a different logic than theassumptions of causal theory that X and Y exist independently and that oneprecedes the other in time. In constitutive theorizing, there is no way todistinguish an independent and dependent variable, and thus the argumentis logical rather than based on specific causal mechanism that can be rep-resented in a covering law. Constitutive theorizing strives to account for theeffects of social structures in the instantiation of phenomena. In this article, Iuse constitutive theorizing to argue that gender, as a social structure, is con-stitutive of offense-defense balance perceptions in terms of perceptions oftechnology, nationalism and offensive military doctrine, and the “protectionracket.”

This type of analysis is subject to counterfactual tests: in a world in whichgendered ideologies were different, perceptions of the offense-defense bal-ance would be different. To understand whether gender is constitutive of theoffense-defense balance, it is necessary to understand what influence genderwould have and how gender would function to be constitutive. Constitutivegender is not a matter of individual characteristics of men or women butrather a structural feature of social and political life.20 V. Spike Peterson de-fines gender as performing several related functions. “In one sense, gender isa socially imposed and internalized lens through which individuals perceiveand respond to the world. In a second sense, the pervasiveness of genderedmeanings shapes concepts, practice and institutions in identifiable genderedways.”21 Gender, therefore, constitutes by serving as a lens for individualidentity and perception of the world and by shaping meaning and politicalpractice. Thus, to argue that gender is constitutive of the offense-defense bal-ance is to argue that gender as an idea constitutes the meanings that materialfactors have for actors as well as the identities of the actors themselves.

Another defining feature of gender as a constitutive factor is that it isdynamic: gender does not just constitute identities and meanings once ina readable and constant manner. Instead, gender identities and meaningsare constantly reproduced by processes of identity construction in whichgender functions as means of encoding power.22 This encoded power notonly distinguishes between values associated with masculinity and values

19 Alexander Wendt, “On Constitution and Causation in International Relations,” Review of Interna-tional Studies 24 no. 1 (1998): 105.

20 V. Spike Peterson and Jacqui True, “ ‘New Times’ and New Conversations,” in The “Man” Questionin International Relations, ed. Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), 16.

21 Peterson, “Transgressing Boundaries,” 194.22 Locher and Prugl, “Feminism and Constructivism,” 123–24.

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associated with femininity, it creates a hierarchy among masculinities basedon a hegemonic vision of masculine virtue. The concept of hegemonic mas-culinity describes the dominant version of ideal male characteristics definedin relation to subordinate masculinities associated with race, sex, or class.Gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power; other hierar-chical relationships such as class, sexuality, or race become “gendered” inthat they are justified by the supposedly natural relationships between menand women. Hegemonic masculinity therefore does not have a fixed defini-tion; rather, it is the masculinity that occupies the hegemonic position in agiven set of gender relations. Hegemonic masculinity is therefore historicallycontingent and contestable.23

The remainder of this article contends that there are three ways genderconstitutes (mis)perceptions of offense-defense balance. First, I argue thatthe gendered perceptions of the meaning and uses of military technologymay constitute perceived offense dominance. Second, I argue that nation-alism is a gendered ideology, and thus gender is a necessary componentof belligerent perception theories of offensive power and the desirability ofoffensive strategies. Third, I explain how a discourse feminists have iden-tified as a “protection racket”—in which war is the heroic activity of malesoldiers saving the lives of innocent women and at the same time earn-ing full citizenship in polities—constitutes gendered identities that promoteconflict-seeking behavior in men and states looking to live up to dominantor hegemonic understandings of masculinity.24

GENDER AND MILITARY TECHNOLOGY

The question of perception of technology is a well-established issue in theoffense-defense literature. Jervis notes that the offense-defense balance de-pends upon whether offensive weapons are distinguishable from defensiveweapons. If they are not distinguishable or if the same weapons can beadvantageous to both the offense and defense, then the offense-defensebalance of military technology cannot mitigate the dangers of war causedby the security dilemma.25 The offensiveness or defensiveness of a particu-lar technology or system of technologies can be considered a “social fact”rather than a “brute fact” given that its classification as offensive or defensivedepends upon perception or intersubjective agreement upon its potential

23 See R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 76; CharlotteHooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2001), 53–56.

24 See, for example, Iris Marion Young, “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on theCurrent Security State,” Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society 29 no. 2 (2003): 15–35.

25 Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” 35.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 221

uses.26 In other words, whether a technology favors the offense or defensedepends upon what meanings that technology holds for particular actors inparticular contexts. Furthermore, some offense-defense theorists argue thathow militaries put technology to use is a better determinant of the offense-defense balance than the mere existence of technologies.27 The processthrough which individuals estimate or use a weapon system’s capabilities isnot necessarily rational; in many cases, gender discourse and identities canplay a role in assigning certain meanings to different technologies.

Many feminists contend that the quest for technological development isbased inherently on masculine or patriarchal values. This argument is basedon a view of gender in which the word “gender” does not refer to individualbodies or representations of men and women but rather a dichotomous sys-tem of thought that has been reproduced in many ways throughout Westernculture. This symbolic structure has arisen from Enlightenment epistemolo-gies that position men alone as rational, legitimate holders and producers ofknowledge.28 Scientific ideology can be seen as based on masculine projectsof control over nature and built upon the gendered Western dichotomiesof mind/body, culture/nature, rationality/emotionality, control/dependence,and objectivity/subjectivity. In each of the identified dichotomies, the firstterm is privileged over the second and associated with masculinity, whilethe second is subordinated and associated with femininity. Science and tech-nology are considered inherently masculine as they are associated with themasculine values of domination, control, and objectivity.29 The harder thetechnology, the more masculine it is. However, from this view, it would bedifficult to ascertain why certain technologies have been considered femininewhile some have been considered masculine at different points in history. Toexamine how and in what ways technology has been gendered throughouthistory would be more useful.

26 As mentioned in note 17, the distinction between social facts and brute facts is contested by manyfeminists who argue that both social and brute facts are the product of the social construction of reality.However, for the purposes of engaging with offense-defense theory, the implications of this argumentwill not be addressed.

27 Biddle, “Rebuilding the Foundations,” 746.28 Feminist work in IR that takes up this critique includes Ann Tickner, “What is Your Research

Program? Some Feminist Answers to International Relations Methodological Questions,” InternationalStudies Quarterly 49 no. 1 (2005): 1–20; Ann Tickner, “You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled EngagementsBetween Feminist and IR Theorists,” International Studies Quarterly 41 no. 4 (1997): 619–23; V. SpikePeterson, “Transgressing Boundaries”; Locher and Prugl, “Feminism and Constructivism.” See also BrookeAckerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True, eds., Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2006).

29 The feminist literature on the masculine underpinnings of science and technology is quite vast. Afew influential works include Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Science and Gender (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1985); Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism and Whose Science? WhoseKnowledge? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women,Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980).

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Studies of scientific and technological practices highlight the ideologicalwork that has gone into building and sustaining technology as a mascu-line domain and rejecting technologies that are incompatible with masculineideal-types. Military technology has not always been considered masculinein the same way and at times has not even been considered masculine atall. In fact, many defensive developments in military technology have beenseen as emasculating since they lessen the importance of traditional warriorvalues of personal courage, physical strength, and honor in warfighting.30

Since bravery is a key component of militarized masculinity, it is emphasizedin gendered evaluations of military technologies. Those technologies whichenhance the strength and bravery of warriors are seen as positively associ-ated with manliness and masculinity. On the other hand, those technologieswhich make it strategically advantageous for soldiers to lie in wait, to holdback, and to defend are seen as less masculine because, if employed, theywould not require soldiers to display the heroism associated with courage,strength, honor, and manhood. In times when military technologies favora defensive image of soldiering (like in World War I), belligerents tend todownplay the role of technology and overestimate the importance of thespirit and honor of offensive warfighting. Thus, to understand how the per-ceptions of technologies change, we should look to the discourses of genderthat understand technologies as suitable or not to dominant definitions ofmasculinity.

Innovations in military technology perpetuate these gendered percep-tions of the offense-defense balance by entrenching an association with sol-diering and manliness. Rachel Weber gives an example of this phenomenonin her study of the design of military cockpits. Weber uses the example ofmilitary cockpits to demonstrate that military technologies are not inherentlymasculine but rather their masculinity has to be constructed. In buildingcockpits for U.S. military aircraft to the specifications of men’s bodies, thePentagon established a bias against women’s bodies in military technologies.The technology of military aircraft has been marked as masculine throughengineering specification and design guidelines. This bias has wide-rangingimplications for gender equality in the military, not only providing a tangiblereason for arresting women’s advancement but also as a symbolic marker ofa masculine social space.31 Gender-based assumptions about whether menor women make better pilots cause the planes to be built in a certain way,thus reinforcing the exclusion of women from certain military roles. The ul-timate honor of being a fighter pilot and the maleness of fighter pilots are

30 Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (NewYork: Gotham Books, 2006), 22, 59, 88.

31 Rachel N. Weber, “Manufacturing Gender in Military Cockpit Design,” in The Social Shapingof Technology, ed. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999),372–81.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 223

then tied together by the technological developments that favor male bodiesand masculine characteristics.

When technological developments fail to favor either male bodies ormasculine characteristics (such as when the developments favor the de-fense), they are likely to be ignored or underestimated by belligerents inconflict. In fact, technologies have fallen in and out of favor on the basisof their perceived relationship with chivalry and honorable soldiering. Forexample, in the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, delegates were concernedwith the unchivalrous nature of the use of airplanes in combat. Belgian dele-gate Auguste Beernaert, presiding over the commission on arms limitations,proclaimed, “To permit the use of such infernal machines, which seem tofall from the sky, exceeds the limit.” He added, “As it is impossible to guardagainst such proceedings, it resembles perfidy, and everything which re-sembles that ought to be scrupulously guarded against. Let us be chivalrouseven in the manner of carrying on war.”32 At this point, the “perfidy” islinked to the asymmetry of such attacks and the difficulty in effective pro-tection against them. The thought of “infernal” bombs being dropped in aperfidious attack positions the tactic of aerial bombardment as feminine andunchivalrous in a discourse of betrayal and treachery. Connecting notions ofbetrayal and chivalry signal linkages to appropriate masculine behavior, towhat is honorable as opposed to what is a base, unmanly type of violence.World War I is a good example of how ideas about gender affect the way inwhich certain technologies are used.

Because the use of planes to drop projectiles was considered unchival-rous, planes were flown in World War I mostly for reconnaissance, support ofground troops, and more prominently, attacks on enemy planes. Even thoughcombat planes were at the forefront of early nineteenth-century technologi-cal advancement, their contribution to the outcome of the war was minimal:the planes were simply the heroic symbols they were made out to be bythe press. The pilots had short life expectancies in the war (sometimes lessthan a week) but came to symbolize the ultimate in masculinity: risk seek-ers, rugged individuals, “knights of the air,” and “lone wolves.” The Britishand French stuck with the single combat model in their air combat againstthe Germans, though the German method of flying in squadrons was moreeffective in battle and less risky for inexperienced pilots. From the Britishperspective, the German method was seen as cowardly and bullying.33 Forthe British, the lone-wolf method of combat was popular in promoting thevirtuous nature of the war as it best approximated the one-on-one combatof chivalric times, a mode of warfare that differed drastically from a land

32 Auguste Beernaert, quoted in, James Brown Scott, The Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conference(New York: Oxford University Press, 1920), 288.

33 See Linda Robertson, The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the AmericanImagination, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 324–26.

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224 L. Wilcox

war that generated mass carnage. Even though the German method of us-ing combat planes was more effective, its perception as less manly led to alengthy delay in its emulation by Entente Powers. In other words, the useof airplanes in World War I was associated not with actual technological ad-vantages but with the ability of the planes to be used in ways that supportedthe bravery and strength of soldiers without impugning chivalry.

The gendering of technology can also be linked to the cult of the offen-sive in the First World War. There is a consensus among offense-defensetheorists that in 1914, military technologies favored the defense, but allbelligerent states, unaware of or determined to ignore the actual offense-defense balance, developed military doctrines that assumed the dominanceof offense.34 Gender, class, and racial ideologies combined to create a situ-ation in which defensive technological developments such as the machinegun and barbed wire were underestimated, and the cavalry charge was stillconsidered to be a key strategic tool for winning wars. Military leaders wereaware of new developments in technology (barbed wire and machine guns)that the “knightly” cavalry would have to overcome but dealt with those tech-nologies much like they dealt with airplanes—by valuing boldness, bravery,strength, and chivalry over defensive positioning, patience, balancing, andcalculation. Though Van Evera does not identify them as such, gendered per-ceptions of technology are evident even in his descriptions of the cult of theoffensive leading up to the First World War. “British and French officers sug-gested that superior morale on the attacking side could overcome superiordefensive firepower, and that this superiority in morale could be achievedsimply by assuming the role of attacker, since offense was a morale-buildingactivity. One French officer contended that ‘the offensive doubles the energyof the troops’. . . In short, mind would prevail over matter; morale wouldtriumph over machine guns.”35

In other words, technologies that required mundane fighting rather thanbravery and excitement would be defeated by morale and courage. As aresult, military and political leaders in World War I interpreted clearly de-fensive technologies as offensive. Van Evera recounts Marshall FerdinandFoch’s understanding that “any improvement in firearms is ultimately boundto add strength to the offensive” and the observation of the French president,Clement Fallieres, that the “offensive alone is suited to the temperament ofFrench soldiers.”36 Continental military leaders downplayed the significance

34 For the use of World War I and offense-defense theory, see Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive”;Jack Snyder, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” in Offense, Defense,and War, 119–57. For a critique of World War I uses, see Jonathon Shimshoni, “Technology, MilitaryAdvantage, and World War I,” in Offense, Defense, and War, 195- 223. For an argument that the Germanwar planner actually knew that the state of technology would favor the defense and lead to a protractedwar, see Lieber, “The New History of World War I.”

35 Van Evera, “Cult of the Offensive,” 71.36 Marshall Foch and Clement Fallieres, quoted in, Van Evera, “Cult of the Offensive,” 72, 71.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 225

of machine guns in Britain’s victories in Africa as these battles were notfought against “civilized” foes, and the British themselves downplayed theimplications of these victories for the ease of conquest and defense.37 Ger-man military dogma was bolstered by a belief that single-mindedness of pur-pose could overcome technological and logistic limitations.38 In the popularGerman literature, technology was imagined as contributing to the adven-ture of war rather than to mass killings and the industrialization of warfare.39

Technologies, then, were interpreted as offensive or defensive not on theirmaterial contribution to offensive or defensive combat strategies but insteadon their relationship to idealized images of soldiers’ masculinity bound up instrength, bravery, and chivalry. Given that values associated with the hege-monic masculinity of heroic combat overwhelmingly favor aggressivenessand offense (bravery, strength, courage, control) and rarely favor military re-straint, developments in military technology are overwhelmingly interpretedas offensive, or their defensive value is downplayed as outside traditionalassociations of soldiering and masculinity. Future research could address theextent to which varying military organizational attitudes toward technologyare affected by different hegemonic masculinities across time and space, thuspotentially explaining the variance of perceptions of the offensive capabili-ties of certain technologies.

GENDERED NATIONALISM AS AN INSPIRATION FOR THE CULT OFTHE OFFENSIVE

In the literature, cult of the offensive entails more than faulty perceptionsof the military implications of the balance of technology: it is also based oninappropriately aggressive military strategies. In his 1984 book, Jack Snyderargues that the offensive strategies of the French, German, and Russian mili-taries in the run-up to the First World War cannot be explained by a rationalcalculation of interests but rather are the result of doctrines that had more todo with militaries’ organizational values than with the technological limita-tions and the defensive nature of the military balance.40 Similarly, Van Everahas argued that the First World War was caused by the glorification of of-fensive strategies in Europe’s militaries, with the lessons of recent prior warsabout the defensive advantages to the technology being ignored.41 While

37 Michael Howard, “Men Against Fire: Expectations of War in 1914,” in Military Strategy and theOrigins of the First World War, ed. Steven E. Miller, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Stephen Van Evera (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1991), 8. See also John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 79–111.

38 Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, 137–38.39 Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of World War I (New York: Berg, 2004), 94–95.40 Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive.41 Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive.” This point is controversial in the literature as Lieber argues

that German war planners planned for an offensive war in spite of knowing that the technology in terms

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the German, French, Belgian, British, and Russian armies were all professingoffensive strategies, they believed that superior morale would overcome thedisadvantages attributed to the machine gun.42 As to reasons for this cult ofthe offensive, Snyder suggests that the duties and training of the military offi-cer force a focus on threats to the state and a view of war as an ever-presentpossibility, taking the hostilities of others for granted. Taking the hostility ofothers for granted leads to a bias toward offensive plans such as preventativewars and preemptive strikes. Due to this bias Snyder notes, “Defensive plansand doctrines will be considered only after all conceivable offensive schemeshave been decisively discredited.”43 From a feminist perspective, argumentsabout military culture are bound up in connection between nationalism andmasculinity. Gender may be said to constitute nationalism in that these ide-ologies are inextricably tied to gendered discourse. Thus, feminists wouldargue that gender provides the backdrop that makes the cult of the offensivepossible.

Some scholars have argued that men are more likely to make war thanwomen because men are naturally aggressive. Wars break out because menare in positions of political and military power. Francis Fukuyama’s 1998Foreign Affairs article is an example of this type of reasoning.44 If this logicwere true, then men are likely to misinterpret the actual offense-defense bal-ance because their aggressive tendencies inspire them to seek out conflict.The relationship between gender and aggression, however, is more compli-cated. Claims of natural aggression in men are politically suspect becausethey imply men cannot behave any way other than aggressively and there-fore ignore the many men who do not. Joshua Goldstein finds little evidencethat increased levels of testosterone in men fuel wars or that biological fac-tors explain the near-monopoly men have had on warfighting throughouthistory.45

Instead of blaming men’s biological composition for state aggressive-ness, feminists in international relations identify military training and theinstallment of martial values in men as sources of aggressive policies.46

of machine guns as well as logistics would most likely lead to a lengthy and bloody war. Lieber maintainsthat despite this the Germans undertook such a war because they felt it was their best chance for regionaldomination. Regardless, the cult of the offensive argument as well as my explanation of the genderedlogic that underpins it would still hold for Britain and France. Furthermore, even if the Germans did notmisperceive the defensive strengths of the available military technology, their instigation of a war theyknew would have serious costs even if successful could be understood in terms of gendered discoursesof the offense or gendered ideologies of nationalism. Lieber, “The New History of World War I,” 177–83.

42 Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive,” 72.43 Snyder, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive,” 130.44 Francis Fukuyama, “Women and the Evolution of World Politics,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 5 (1998):

24–40.45 Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 143–58.46 See Francine D’Amico and Laurie Weinstein, Gender Camouflage: Women and the US Military

(New York: New York University Press, 1999), 5; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (1987; repr.,

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 227

Cynthia Enloe draws attention to myriad strategies associating nationalismand masculinity. From promises of a fast-track to “first-class citizenship” forracial minorities to presumptions of cultural superiority for groups alreadyprivileged, military recruiters have used these strategies around the worldand through time to encourage men to enlist.47 In the case of the First WorldWar, a “crisis of masculinity” in Britain was incited by much of the workingclasses’ physical ineligibility for military service, resulting in widespread gov-ernment intervention to produce a nation of men more suited for the rigorsof war; Britain deemed this necessary to maintain its colonial empire andplace in the world.48 Anxieties over the ability of men to defend the nationprompted attempts to reshape gender relations throughout society to encour-age the reinvigoration of traditional gender roles. This evidence indicates thatrather than being inherently masculine, the military serves as an importantsite for the creation and maintenance of gender identities in society. As Enloepoints out, “If maleness, masculinity, and militarism were inevitably boundtogether, militaries would always have all the soldiers they believed theyrequired.”49 As “a socially imposed and internalized lens through which in-dividuals perceive and respond to the world,” gender, as an identity, can doa better job explaining the underestimation of the costs of war than theoriesof men’s innate aggression.50

Gender identity (gender as a way of being in and interpreting the world)can help explain the romanticizing of offensive warfare. Understanding themilitary as an institution that imbues men with the values of warrior masculin-ity can help explain the disproportionate prevalence of offensive doctrinesgiven the objective offense-defense balance. Barry Posen describes the at-tractiveness of offensive doctrines to militaries as resulting from the military’sdrive to increase autonomy and self-image.51 Snyder explains the offensivebias in the German military establishment as partly due to interests in pro-moting war as a “beneficial social institution.”52 Likewise, David Englanderargues that the offensive spirit in the British military leading up to WorldWar I expressed the military’s position as the vanguard of a virile, manlynation.53 Feminists argue that military socialization not only shapes men’s

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Hooper, Manly States; 81–82; Goldstein, War and Gender,chap. 5.

47 Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2000), 237.

48 Johanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1996).

49 Enloe, Maneuvers, 245.50 Peterson, “Transgressing Boundaries,” 194.51 Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).52 Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, 123. See also Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of World

War I, 97.53 David Englander, “Discipline and Morale in the British Army,” in State, Society and Mobilization

in Europe During the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),126.

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228 L. Wilcox

bodies in terms of desired levels of fitness, it also serves as an important riteof passage in making men out of boys. The cultural and institutional trainingof the military takes the masculine virtues of stoicism, detachment, aggres-sion, strength, and resolve and works to implant them into the individualcharacteristics of men. Training men for war, even outside the institutionalsetting of the military, has taken place through sports, adventure stories,and movies.54 Goldstein finds that, as war is a possibility if not a frequentactivity in virtually all societies, societies must train men to be men—that is,to inculcate men with martial values that they would not otherwise have.55

Men must be trained to kill, to perform under the immense stress and grue-some horror of battlefield conditions, and to endure psychological traumaby suppressing their emotions. This training begins at an early age and issupported by women in many ways.56 The possibility of war creates a per-ceived necessity to instill certain characteristics in men, which form the basisfor certain types of masculine gender identity.

In very few places in history is this pattern as clear as in the time leadingup to the First World War. Early in the twentieth century, state leaders heldthe pervasive belief that war was a normal policy option rather than anextraordinary measure and that war was even desirable as a cure for society’sills, including a growing “emasculation” of society.57 War was also thoughtto be a crucial test of the strength and virility of ethnic or racial groups. Inshort, war was considered to have positive effects for shoring up masculineidentity and masculine values in society. German officials and intellectuals inparticular believed that war was necessary for Germany to fulfill its destinyof superiority over the inferior peoples of Europe.58

Conceptions of gender that are concerned with symbolic structure ofgender, rather than the appropriate roles of men and women, assert thatoffense has been gendered masculine, while defense has been genderedfeminine. This is due to the association of offensive with activity, aggression,strength, and boldness (concepts considered masculine in Western culture)and the association of defensive with passivity, weakness, and victimhood(all considered feminine). Offensive strategies are preferred because of theassociation with positive, masculine attributes, while defensive strategies areconsidered weak and unmanly. Carol Cohn describes the importance of “the

54 Hooper, Manly States, 80–87. See also Michael C. C. Adams, The Great Adventure: Male Desireand the Coming of World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

55 Goldstein, War and Gender, chap. 5.56 Ibid.57 Holger H. Herwig, “Germany,” in The Origins of World War I, ed. Richard Hamilton and Hol-

ger Herwig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 150–87; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ImperialGermany 1867–1918 (London: Arnold, 1995), 158–59. This belief was not limited to Germany but wascommon in Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth and early nineteenth century. See alsoKristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood : How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-Americanand Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

58 Herwig, “Germany,” 168; Mommsen, Imperial Germany 1876–1918, 205–16.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 229

wimp factor” in her experiences working with defense intellectuals in the1980s.59 When certain strategic actions, such as withdrawal from territory, areinterpreted as wimpy, no matter how rational, they are delegitimized. Playinga simulated war game with a group of defense intellectuals, Cohn’s team lostby withdrawing troops from some areas and refusing to retaliate from anuclear strike, even though the team’s homeland and its civilian populationhad remained safe. Such actions become unthinkable in the discourse ofinternational security even though they may be strategically beneficial andconsistent with other value systems. In this way, aggression and offense inthe international arena are legitimized through gendered discourses. Genderas a discourse defines the boundaries of acceptable options and serves as a“preemptive deterrent” to certain strategic options.60 Gender thus constitutesthe offense/defense binary by assigning more value to the offensive posturethan the defensive posture. This is one way in which feminists would attemptto explain why decision makers have the propensity to overestimate thestrategic advantages of the offensive. There is a heavy gender deterrentagainst the passive, weak, defensive position, even if, as military balancetheorists allow, the defense usually has the objective advantage in war, anddisasters like the First World War can occur if the balance is misinterpreted.

The militarization that is linked to offensive policies is closely connectedto nationalism. The literature on offense-defense balance indicates that na-tionalism can affect the balance by making people more willing to fight.61

Nationalism is also a source of militarism and offensive strategies as it usuallyentails elites and military planners perceiving conquest as easy because ofthe superiority of their own soldiers. Van Evera lists nationalism as a mecha-nism through which the cult of the offensive can be developed, but he doesnot explore how it is possible for nationalistic sentiment to be shaped in thedirection of favoring the offensive. Offense-defense theorists note that bel-ligerents tend to attribute a more coherent, grand, and evil scheme to theirenemies than is often the case, to believe that their adversaries are more uni-fied than is the case,and to assume that an opponents’ policy inconsistencyis a result of duplicity or treachery rather than confusion.62 Offense-defensetheorists do not, however, provide a way for scholars to understand theseconsistent misperceptions as a matter of the gendered practices of identityand nationalism. Feminist analyses would argue that nationalism and mil-itarism are constituted by gender discourses in the process of “othering”

59 Carol Cohn, “War, Wimps and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War,” in Gendering WarTalk, ed. Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 227–46;Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Signs: Journal of Women inCulture and Society 12 no. 4 (1987): 687–718.

60 Cohn, “War, Wimps and Women,” 232.61 See, for example, Glaser and Kaufmann, “What is the Offense-Defense Balance,” 288–89.62 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1976), 319–21, 323–26, 338–42.

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230 L. Wilcox

as well as in the promotion of a national identity and chauvinism throughideologies about gender roles.

The process of dehumanizing or feminizing enemies is one way tounderstand this misperception. David Campbell, for example, argues thatstate identity is secured by discourses about the threats others pose. “For thestate, identity can be understood as the outcome of exclusionary practices inwhich resistant elements to a secure identity on the ‘inside’ are linked througha discourse of ‘danger’ with threats identified and located on the ‘outside.”’63

These outside threats are constructed in terms historically associated with thefeminine, such as irrational, dirty, chaotic, and evil. As others are constructedas inferior through a feminizing discourse, their abilities are underestimated,while somewhat paradoxically, and the threat they pose is overestimated.For example, the United States and Britain underestimated Japan’s militarycapabilities during World War II because of beliefs in the inferiority of theJapanese. The Japanese were considered subhuman and illogical, and theirmilitary capabilities were downgraded prior to the outbreak of war.64 U.S.and U.K. military officials ignored evidence of Japanese military successesand capabilities based on the assumption that the Japanese simply couldnot make such achievements.65 Thus, the belief that wars will be quick andeasy—because “our men” are superior in strength, resolve, and technologicalcapability—has its roots in a process of othering in which one’s own identityis buttressed by the distancing from and disparagement of a different nationalor racial group. The feminization of enemies is a reflection of masculinizednationalism: states tell stories about their valorized masculinity in relation totheir opponents’ devalued femininity, or subordinate masculinity.

The subordinate masculinity that encouraged Britain, France, and theUnited States into WWI was Germany’s barbarism. The discourse of barbarism,which was applied to the Germans in the two world wars and to the Japanesein World War II, has had a double meaning in the West: barbarism is consid-ered the opposite of civilization, and it can be a good thing or a bad thing.Barbarism is good when it involves a rejection of the feminized civiliza-tion that begets commerce, industry, and domesticity for the more strenuouspursuits of hunting and war. However, it is considered negative, a lowerform of masculinity, when it refers to racial, national, or social others. Thissubordinate masculinity is associated with uncontrolled aggression, a hyper-masculinity that is to be feared and tamed. In British discourse, Germanswere huns who stood for despotism and militarism as opposed to the Britishwho stood for individualism and civilized values and accomplishments. This

63 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Difference(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 68.

64 See John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: PantheonBooks, 1986), 94–97.

65 Ibid., 99–117.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 231

construction also entailed a fear that the Germans were a more vital peoplewho might succeed in overtaking the British Empire, which led some to callfor British men to emulate what was seen as a more “virile race.” 66

This sort of national myth-making in increasing the likelihood of warplays a prominent role in Van Evera’s results of perceived offensive dom-inance. Van Evera, however, does not theorize the results of this myth-making. He denies the centrality of myth-making to the concept of nation-alism. “Myth is not an essential ingredient of nationalism: nationalism canalso rest on a group solidarity based on truth, and the effects of national-ism are largely governed by the degree of truthfulness of the beliefs that agiven nationalism adopts; as truthfulness diminishes, the risks posed by thenationalism increase.”67 Here, Van Evera mistakenly equates myth-makingwith falsity. It is these myths that create the nation through the hope of acommon future and, despite the relatively recent invention of nationalism,the figuration of the nation with a common, distant origin.68 Arguably, thesemyths about national greatness may be constitutive of aggressive wars. Assuch, myths play a crucial role in the othering and dehumanization of theenemy along gendered lines such that the extreme violence of war becomesfathomable and war becomes viable policy option. Feminist scholars haveexamined these myths and their causes and consequences in terms of gen-dered ideologies and found them to be influential in remaking gender roles.

Rather than seeing the relationship between nationalism and the en-trenchment of certain gender identities as a matter of coincidence, femi-nists have theorized the ways in which national identity is produced thoughthe use of gender discourses. Nationalism, which was at a highpoint inthe buildup to the First World War, is a set of discourses about who “we”are and who belongs in the political community. As such, it reproduces theinside/outside logic of the state system, in which those inside the state ornation are superior to those outside. Nationalism therefore depends upon“national chauvinism” such that members of other nations as well as racial,sexual, or ideological others inside the nation are constructed in terms offemininity or subordinate masculinity. These others are weak and inferior,or they are hypermasculine—beast-like in brutality and sexuality. Feministshave argued that the boundaries between the self and the other are in partproduced by discourses of gender and sexuality.69

Feminists have demonstrated that the nationalist discourses that consti-tute the identity of the nation are predicated upon discourses of gender thatreproduce traditional gender roles. Feminists argue that nationalists need

66 George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002),8; Kent, Gender and Power in Britain, 239.

67 Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” International Security 18 no.4 (1994):27, note 42.

68 Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation. (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 43.69 Joane Nagel, “Ethnicity and Sexuality,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 107–33.

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gendered ideologies to gain support for their cause.70 For example, AnneMcClintock writes, “All too often in male nationalism, gender difference be-tween women and men serves to symbolically define the limits of nationaldifference and power between men.”71 In the discourse of nationalism, all thenation’s men are brothers. As one WWI recruiting agent proclaimed, “Therewere no rich and no poor now, no Protestants and Catholics, no Conserva-tives and Liberals; we were all Britishers!”72 The “imagined community” ofthe nation depends upon the homosocial relations of men to protect the na-tion (construed as a woman’s body) against foreign incursion.73 In the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries, ideals of masculinity were very much linkedto nationalism, militarism, and imperialism by upholding courage, duty, andpatriotism as the ultimate masculine values, in which resistance to militarismwas coded as cowardly or feminine.74 Symbolic gender imagery serves notonly to construct the boundaries of national identities but reproduces genderidentity as well. Propaganda and recruitment campaigns frequently held upthe volunteer solider as the only acceptable man—those who did not vol-unteer were seen as weak, effete, and cowardly.75 The war also dampenedthe feminist movement in Britain as many feminists and non-feminists sup-ported traditional gender roles for men and women despite large numbersof women working outside the home during the war.76 As an example ofhow nationalist passions frequently prevail over attempts to reform tradi-tional gender roles, the feminist magazine The Suffragette changed its nameto Britannia to symbolize patriotic unity and its support of the war effortdespite its critiques of the political and legal order.77

As gender is a relational concept, hegemonic definitions of masculi-nity necessarily entail hegemonic definitions of femininity. Nira Yuval-Davis

70 For further examples of the ways in which feminists have questioned nationalism and for greaterdetail about the differences between anti-colonial, post-colonial, settler-state and other types of nation-alisms, see Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (New York: Routledge,1996), 45–63; Jill Vickers, “Feminists and Nationalism,” in Gender, Race and Nation: Global Perspectives,ed. Jill Vickers and Vanaja Dhruvarajan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 2002.

71 Anne McClintock, “Family Feuds, Gender, Nationalism and the Family,” Feminist Review 44 (Sum-mer 1993): 62.

72 Robb, British Culture and the First World War, 5.73 V. Spike Peterson, “Sexing Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexual,” International Feminist

Journal of Politics 1 no. 1 (1999): 48–49. See also Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1988).

74 Joane Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnicand Racial Studies 21 no. 2 (March 1998): 242- 69. This logic is also aptly demonstrated in the case ofthe Spanish-American War in Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood.

75 Robb, British Culture and the First World War, 32–36; Ilana R. Bet-El, “Men and Soldiers: BritishConscripts, Concepts of Masculinity, and the Great War,” in Borderlines: Genders and Identities in Warand Peace, 1870–1930, ed. Billie Melman (New York: Routledge, 1998), 73–94.

76 Susan Kingsley Kent, “The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the Demise of BritishFeminism,” The Journal of British Studies 27 no. 3 (1988): 232–53.

77 Elshtain, Women and War, 111–12.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 233

categorizes several ways in which women function in nationalist ideolo-gies, symbolically or in their actions.78 Women are constructed as a na-tion’s biological reproducers as well as the cultural reproducers. After all,“group reproduction—both biological and social—is fundamental to nation-alist practice, process, and politics.”79 Under nationalist regimes, women areoften expected to bear and raise young men who will fight on behalf of thenation. The nation is therefore dependent upon women in traditional rolesas mothers and caretakers to reproduce itself. Because of their stereotypedrole as social reproducers of the nation, women are considered the mark-ers of the differences between ethnic or cultural groups. The entire nationmay be symbolized by a woman who must be fought and died for. Indeed,nationalist discourses often present the nation as a woman, a guardian, andsymbol of the nation’s values, such as Germania, Britannia, France’s Mari-anne, or the cult of Queen Louise of Prussia. These symbolic women areMadonna-like in their image as chaste mothers of the nation.80 Rape, then,becomes a metaphor for national humiliation—as in the Rape of Belgium orthe Rape of Kuwait—as well as a tactic of war used to symbolically provethe superiority of one’s national group.

Not only do nationalist projects construct gender identities that prescribedifferent spheres for men and women, but this production of gender iden-tities has been a necessary condition of nationalism as women have figuredsymbolically as the nation’s markers who must be protected by the menwho run the state (or are trying to create one). Nationalism is naturalized,or legitimated, though gender discourses that naturalize the domination ofone group over another through the disparagement of the feminine and theconstitution of separate and unequal spheres for men and women. Genderis constitutive of nationalism, which is factor in the promotion of offensivemilitary doctrines and the cult of the offensive. Thus, in order to understandhow nationalism works to promote offensive policies, we should look to hownationalism is produced through discourses of gender that promote martialvalues as constitutive of ideal-type masculinity. Furthermore, nationalism, interms of the assertion of the superiority of one nation’s men over another’s,often legitimates war by means of a protection racket, in which offensivewars are fought in order to defend women and children from potential oractual threats. This protection racket extends the logic of nationalism to allowfor offensive policies to be legitimated as defensive.

78 Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation; Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Women-Nation-State (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).

79 Peterson, “Sexing Political Identities,” 39.80 George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985),

90–100.

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234 L. Wilcox

PROTECTION AS OFFENSIVE MILITARY DOCTRINE

Rather than a unified, aggressive, and warlike nature that gender essential-ists like Fukuyama imagine, the hegemonic masculinity of the First WorldWar called upon men to be courageous protectors of those less strong andcapable. This is a chivalrous version of masculinity that has more frequentlyaccompanied offensive warfare than a dominating, conquering bloodlust(although the former may resemble the latter from certain vantage points).These gendered constructions of identity can make offensive military strate-gies appear to be defensive, enabling wars to take place. Often, the genderedideologies that constitute nationalism contribute to forming offensive doc-trines. Chivalric masculinity is not solely about men but rather genderedrelations of power. In particular, the just war narrative involves “good guys”or “just warriors” who fight against “bad guys” for just and valorous rea-sons.81 In order to produce the chivalric masculinity of the just warrior, a“beautiful soul” and a malevolent other are needed.82 As Iris Marion Youngexplains, “The gallantly masculine man faces the world’s difficulties and dan-gers in order to shield women from harm. . . . Good men can only appearin their goodness if we assume that lurking outside the warm familial wallsare aggressors, the ‘bad’ men, who wish to attack them.”83 Not only doesthis protection racket legitimate war, it may be said to legitimate the state’sconstitution as the provider of security against outside threats as well. Theprotection racket is a promising pathway to explain the cult of the offensive.

Feminist scholarship in IR has described the various ways in which thisideal of chivalric masculinity has formed the basis of the national securitystate as well the principles behind just war theory. For example, Jean BethkeElshtain defines “just warriors” and “beautiful souls” as gender identities thatlegitimate war. Masculine just warriors are only reluctantly violent, but vi-olent nonetheless, as they wage war on behalf of the pure and femininebeautiful souls who are “too good for this world yet absolutely necessaryto it.”84 While seemingly benign, such chivalric discourses require helpless,feminized victims, not full and equal citizens capable of defending them-selves. In the just war narrative, women are both the reason for fighting andthose who must be excluded from fighting. Women, as beautiful souls, arenaıve about the world of politics and war. The just warrior fights to protecther safety, innocence, and way of life. At the same time, the protector andthe protected cannot be equal to one other. “The male protector confrontsevil aggressors in the name of the right and the good, while those under

81 Laura Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 35.82 Elshtain, Women and War, 3–1383 Iris Marion Young, “Feminist Reactions to the Contemporary Security Regime,” Hypatia 18, no. 1

(Winter 2003): 224.84 Elshtain, Women and War, 140.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 235

his protection submit to his order and serve as handmaids to his efforts.”85

Thus, discourses of protection reproduce gendered relations of power andsubordination. Without this discourse of protection, many of the offensivemilitary doctrines that resulted in war would not have been possible. Thisdiscourse enables men to take violent action with the narrative that makestheir actions seem moral, even commendable. Even so, specifics of time andplace shape the specific structures this form of hegemonic masculinity takes.

It is likely that prevailing gendered constructions of identity in the formof chivalric myths in the upper classes contributed to offensive strategies andthe cult of the offensive in the British military during World War I. Tropesof “defending civilization” or “civilized values” as a reason for mountingoffensive military campaigns have a long history. The resonance of suchdiscourses—for example, World War I as a crusade to defend civilizationagainst the barbarity of the Germans—is based in gendered discourses inwhich medieval knights saved damsels or Madonnas from cruel beasts.86

Chivalric tales were immensely popular during this era, and these tropes hadbroad appeal. The romantic fantasy of war was such that the enemy wasnot so much another military, but the corrupt, feminized, and commercial-ized world. War would provide an escape for young men, a chance to gainhonor, as well as a purge and a regeneration of society.87 That war wouldcure societies of the weakness, decadence, and emasculation of peace wasa prevailing cultural assumption among the upper-class members of the po-litical elite across Europe. This hope of rejuvenation through war was linkedto social Darwinism and the threat of racial degeneration.88 Alarmed at thelack of physical fitness of urban volunteers for the Boer war, Britain be-gan a campaign that encouraged hunting and other sports to increase thephysical fitness and virility of British youth. This task was seen as essen-tial to maintaining the British imperial holdings and racial dominance. TheScouting Movement, begun by Lord Baden-Powell and emphasizing outdoorexpeditions, action over reflection, and the development of skills for war,was linked to concerns over military fitness and colonial expansion.89 InBaden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys and in many popular adventure booksof the time, boys and young men were encouraged to conduct themselvesin accordance with the chivalrous values of bravery, sacrifice, honor, and

85 Young, “Feminist Reactions,” 230.86 See Robertson, The Dream of Civilized Warfare, 115–54; Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism:

War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 288–90.87 Adams, The Great Adventure; Goldstein, War and Gender, 275–76; Braudy, From Chivalry to

Terrorism, 281–84.88 See, for example, Adams, The Great Adventure; Herwig, “Germany,” 150–88; Susan Kingsley Kent,

Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990 (London: Routledge, 1999), 236–42; Pat Thane, “The BritishImperial State and the Construction of National Identities,” in Borderlines, 30–31.

89 Angela Woollacott, Gender and Empire (Basingstroke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 75–77; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 48–51.

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236 L. Wilcox

loyalty to nation and religion.90 For its part, the German Social DemocratParty justified its support of the war, despite its past pacifistic stance, by afear of Tsarist Russia and Russian atrocities if Germany were defeated. AnSPD press release declared, “We are sure that our comrades in uniform of allsorts and condition will abstain from all unnecessary cruelty, but we cannothave this trust in the motley hordes of the Tsar, and we will not have ourwomen and children sacrificed to the bestiality of the Cossacks.”91

At first glance, this image of the just warrior as defender of civilizationseems to favor the defensive (and would therefore not contribute to the cultof the offensive), but a closer look shows that the discourse of the protectionracket is actually offensive in three distinct ways. First, the discourse leadsstates to value offense in order to be the best possible protectors since offenseis associated with increased chance at victory and a perception of an activeapproach to protection. Second, it allows states aspiring to the idealizedor hegemonic masculinity for their militaries to identify those in need ofprotection outside their borders and to start aggressive wars to protect thosein need.92 Third, insomuch as protection is a performance rather than anactual service, the appearance of boldness and bravery in actions taken onbehalf of this chivalrous ideal brings attention to the protecting which isbeing done. In these ways, the protection racket can be associated with theincreased likelihood of pursuing offensive military strategies.

The chivalric codes in vogue at the turn of the century identified thevulnerable female body as the main cause for war. The enemy was cast asan inhuman, sexual predator. Propagandists described attacks on Belgiumtowns in late summer, 1914, as the “Rape of Belgium.” A famous World War Ipropaganda poster illustrated this melding of nationality and gender: a largebrown gorilla-like creature with a bloodied bat labeled “kulter” grasps a half-naked white woman who appears to have fainted. “Destroy this mad brute:Enlist,” the poster demands. The Bryce Report as well as other propagandisticaccounts enumerated German crimes, focusing particularly on sensationalstories of brutal treatment of civilians, especially women and children.93

Sexualized violence against both men and women were widely reported,justifying war in the name of chivalrous values which held that worthy menwould act nobly to stop such atrocities.94 Posters in Britain encouraging men

90 Bet-El, “Men and Soldiers,” 78–79; Kent, Gender and Power in Britain, 237–39.91 Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War (New York: Berg, 2004), 54.92 For example, the legitimation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to protect Afghan women from

Afghan men.93 The Bryce Report was an attempt to verify accounts of German atrocities in Belgium in 1914. It

was published in 1915 as the result of an official investigation commissioned by the British governmentand led by James Bryce. The report is considered to be a prime example of wartime propaganda due toits exaggeration of actual atrocities as well as lurid and sensationalistic accounts of the atrocities.

94 Stewart Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War: How the U.S. Was Conditioned to Fight the Great Warof 1914–1918, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996); Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War(Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education, 2002), 16–19; Kent, Gender and Power in Britain, 273–77.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 237

to volunteer evoked women and children as defenseless targets of war anddrew upon chivalric discourses of honor and protection, declaring, “Yourrights of citizenship give you the privilege of joining your fellows in defenceof your Honour and your Homes,” and “There Are Three Types of Men:Those who hear the call and Obey, Those who Delay, and—The Others.”95

“The Others” here is meant to refer to the enemy who is not a just warriorand does not share the same chivalric values. Barbaric men do not observethe laws of war and attack civilians; thus, adhering to the distinction betweencivilians and combatants produces the just warrior, while attacking civiliansconstitutes the barbarian.96 In fearing Russian barbarism, formerly pacifistGermans could thus support an ostensibly offensive war by their commitmentto national defense.97 Discourses of chivalrous masculinity served not onlymake offensive approaches to international politics in the First World Warpossible but also to constitute a set of gendered power relations that positedwhite men as protectors of the nation against racialized others who threatenthe purity of naıve and defenseless women.

Examples of the protection racket’s influence on perceived offensivedominance, a cult of the offensive, are common in present-day politics aswell. This chivalric narrative has been resurrected in the post-Cold Warera, and gendered identities have not only legitimated but also promotedwars. The various humanitarian wars of the 1990s are read as narrative inwhich NATO and other actors reinvent themselves as masculine, heroic,rescuers of weak and passive victims.98 Abouali Farmanfarmanian describeshow the reports of Iraqi army troops raping women in Kuwait were used toconstruct Iraq as a barbaric enemy such that war was not only thinkable, butnecessary.99 Post-Cold War American masculinity was “tough and tender,”capable of awesome military prowess but also compassion and empathy.100

Ten years later, feminists decried using the plight of women in Afghanistanas justification for a massive U.S.-led military campaign against the rulingTaliban.101 Feminists used Gayatri Spivak’s phrase “white men saving brown

95 Bet-El, “Men and Soldiers,” 82.96 Helen Kinsella, “Securing the Civilian: Sex and Gender in the Laws of War,” in Power in Global

Governance, ed. Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),264.

97 Nicholas Stargardt, The German Idea of Militarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),127–49.

98 Anne Orford, “Muscular Humanitarianism: Reading the Narratives of the New Interventionism,”European Journal of International Law 10 no. 4 (1999): 679–711.

99 Abouali Farmanfarmaian, “Did You Measure Up? The Role of Race and Sexuality in the Gulf War,”in The Geopolitics Reader, ed. Gearoid O Tuathail (London: Routledge, 1998), 286–93.

100 Steve Niva, “Tough and Tender: New World Order Masculinity and the Gulf War,” in The “ Man”Question in International Relations, ed. Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart. (Boulder: Westview Press,1998), 109–28.

101 See, for example, Laura Shepherd, “Veiled References: Constructions of Gender in the BushAdministration Discourse on the Attacks on Afghanistan Post- 9/11,” International Feminist Journal ofPolitics 8 no. 1 (March 2006): 19–41.

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women from brown men”—originally meant to describe the British abolitionof suttee in India—to describe the racial and gendered discourse used tolegitimate the war in Afghanistan.102 It is difficult to imagine such warstaking place without the production of gender identities that legitimated anddrove these conflicts.

The war in Afghanistan may be considered a retaliation or defensiveoperation in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, but militaryaction did not solely target the training bases of al-Qaeda. The mission ofliberating Afghan women was used to garner public support for the invasionand served also to silence feminist protests against the war.103 Two and ahalf years later, this same discourse of liberation was used to fuel supportto overthrow Saddam Hussein, who was represented in racialized terms asan inhuman despot after the evidence against weapons of mass destructionturned out to be fabricated or exaggerated. This narrative of rescuing theIraqi people (“damsels in distress”) from the clutches of an evil man mayhelp to explain why the United States and its allies came to believe, withlittle evidence, that the invading forces would be greeted as liberators. Theserescue narratives demonstrate that the protection racket encourages offensivemilitary policies even when it is couched in the language of defense andprotection. The protection racket is a gender discourse that produces thegender identities of just warriors and beautiful souls. It is also the backdropthat allows for offensive military policies to be viewed as defensive, therebygaining traction and legitimating war by enabling offensive wars to takeplace under the mantle of protection. Discourse of protection can thereforecontribute to understanding the occurrence of offensive policies in the lightof an ostensible defensive dominance.

GENDER, SECURITY AND PERCEPTIONS OF OFFENSE-DEFENSEBALANCE

One conclusion of the offense-defense literature is that states perceive them-selves to be much more insecure than they really are, as few great pow-ers have ever been wiped out. Van Evera writes, “The prime threat to thesecurity of modern great powers is . . . themselves. Their greatest menacelies in their own tendency to exaggerate the dangers they face, and to re-spond with counterproductive belligerence.”104 States have been more or less

102 Miriam Cooke, “Saving Brown Women,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 no.1 (2002): 468–70.

103 See, for example, Zillah Eisenstein, “Feminisms in the Aftermath of September 11,” Social Text20, no 3. (Fall 2002): 79–99; Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin, “Sex, Gender and September 11,”The American Journal of International Law 96, no. 3 (July 2002): 600–05; Jan Jindy Pettman, “FeministInternational Relations After 9/11,” Brown Journal of International Affairs 10 no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2004):85–96; Young, “Feminist Reactions.”

104 Van Evera, Causes of War, 192.

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Gendering the Cult of the Offensive 239

secure, but their feelings of insecurity have led to great insecurity for peopleworldwide. Millions of people were killed in wars in the twentieth centuryalone, to say nothing of those who were injured, lost loved ones, or hadtheir lives disrupted by war.

Van Evera goes on to write, “The causes of this syndrome pose a largequestion of students of international relations.” Feminists have much to offerin regard to this question. Focusing on how gender discourses and genderidentities provide a necessary condition under which many factors of theoffense-defense balance can thrive, feminists can offer a way to think aboutmany of the issues related to the causes of war that have been neglectedby most scholars of security studies. For scholars interested in the offense-defense balance as a way of explaining why wars occur, feminist analysiscan contribute to both defensive realists who consider wars to begin becauseof offense-defense balance perceptions and scholars who support the offen-sive realist position that states start wars regardless of their calculations ofthe offense-defense balance. Thus, despite the recent debate between KierLieber and Jack Snyder about whether or not a cult of the offensive wasthe key factor in Germany’s offensive war plans, feminist analysis of na-tionalism and the protection racket can potentially provide insights into theunderlying conditions that make preventative or preemptive wars possible interms of anxieties over gender and racial identities and gendered discoursesof military strength and the benefits of war.105 Feminists maintain that of-fensive wars are based on similar concerns over gender relations and thenation, making offensive wars appear to be legitimately defensive. As Sny-der argues, “The belief in the feasibility and necessity of offensive strategyentices both fearful and greedy aggressors to attack [and] erases the distinc-tion between security and expansion.”106 The gendered constitution of thecult of the offensive can apply to states acting out of fear or expansion. Thefeminist analyses of the role gender plays in constituting the perception oftechnology, the gendered ideologies of nationalism, and the gendered de-fensive logic of the protection racket provide a theoretical rationale for ex-plaining the erasure of the distinction between security and expansion thatfurther research may support. A feminist analysis would understand gen-dered ideologies and identities to be at the root of both strategies, withparticular historical manifestations leading to variation in the specific formsthat militarism takes.

Far from being only concerned with the status of women, feminists usethe concept of gender to analyze the workings of power through gendereddiscourses and identities. Feminists have demonstrated that gender mattersin the ways in which technologies are perceived and used as well as in

105 Lieber, “The New History of World War I”; Jack Snyder and Kier Lieber, “Defensive Realism andthe “New” History of World War I,” International Security (Summer 2008): 174–94.

106 Snyder, “Defensive Realism,” 177.

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formulating offensive military strategies. Gendered perceptions of technol-ogy, gendered discourses of nationalism, and the protection racket are threerelated ways in which offensive wars may be legitimated and thus enabled.Further empirical studies would be useful to increase understanding of thespecific ways in which gender discourses and gender identities contributeto, or contradict, other explanations for the causes of war. By explainingthe impact gender has on issues related to the perception of offense-defensebalance, feminist analysis shows how gender discourses and the productionof gender identities are not confined to individuals and the private realm butrather are a pervasive fact of social life on an international scale. Internationalrelations theorists concerned with determining the causes of war would dowell to consider the ways in which gender can shape the conditions underwhich wars occur.

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